Gluten-Free Red Velvet Cupcakes & recent lovin’ from the oven …

It has been a busy week in the Oven Lovin’ kitchen. I would have to say, the highlight of the sugary madness was definitely baking 8 dozen cupcakes within 48hrs; 4 dozen of which were brand new alcohol infused recipes I came up with on the fly. I came out of that a little worse for wear (sifting even another cup of icing sugar would probably send me over the edge THANK GOD FOR MY BOYFRIEND SIFTING MASTER <3) but I am proud for finishing the lot and I had a lot of fun baking them up. All in all, it was a very fulfilling and tasty week!

I received a special order for gluten-free Red Velvet cupcakes! I was so glad that my customer didn’t require that they be vegan as well because, COME ON, you can’t have Red Velvet without that delicious cream cheese frosting! The recipe I came up with actually baked up beautifully and I am quite happy with the result; so much so that I added GLUTEN-FREE RED VELVET CUPCAKES to the Gluten-Free & Vegan menu page 🙂

I also took a little time to work on my oatmeal cookie recipe. While I have really good recipes for my Coffee n’ Cream oatmeal cookies as well as my White Chocolate Peanut Butter oatmeal cookies, I would like to have an amazing base oatmeal cookie recipe which I can adapt with different additives. While my two existing recipes are delicious, I am someone who enjoys consistency; thus, I created a delicious, thick, chewy, and perfectly spiced oatmeal cookie. I couldn’t resist making them a little special (since the texture of the cookie is more what I was testing) so I added maple syrup and used 100% brown sugar in an attempt to make Maple & Brown Sugar oatmeal cookies. With white chocolate chips. I COULDN’T RESIST! Aaaaanywho, I felt the cookies were super successful, but I’d like to test the recipe a few more times and make some slight alterations before I commit to it.

The laaaaaaast but not least thing I wanted to share with y’all is something a little bit fun. I am ALL ABOUT baking up weird flavours and trying to push the boundaries of existing flavour profiles. So, although I don’t have a picture (because I wasn’t happy with how flat they turned out) I created what I am calling Mexican Xocolatyl Chip cookies. Xocolatyl (I believe) is the Aztec word for chocolate, which they allegedly were the creators of. Aztec chocolate was traditionally made with certain spices ground into the cocoa beans as well as some sort of seed which I can’t remember currently. Anyways, people would usually experience this flavour profile in Mexican Hot Chocolate drinks, which is where the Mexican part of the name came from. SO WHAT IS IT EVEN I can hear you asking? Basically, I melted down a mixture of dark and milk chocolate, stirred in spices like cayenne, cinnamon, and chili, let the chocolate set, chopped it up, and baked it into my signature chocolate chip cookies. Also mixed a little cinnamon into the dough. IT SOUNDS WEIRD, but it actually works. Testers of the cookie seemed to be weirded out but oddly pleased at the same time. I’m going to work on the spice ratios a little more before adding the cookie to my menu, but look for it in the future if wacky flavours are your thing!

Okay so what’s that picture of then? I’m all about imagining you asking me questions. I like to think you are curious/interested in my dabblings. That loaf is an avocado loaf with a raspberry glaze. I love avocado. So buttery. So tasty. So soft. Often in healthy baking, people substitute avocado for the fat portion of a recipe, which I think is just genius. In the case of this loaf, the avocado flavour was actually meant to stand out but alas, I did not add enough. Gorgeous colour though! I also made some cupcakes with the batter that turned out even brighter green. The loaf itself was tasty, especially with the glaze, but it definitely needs more work. Which I will continue sometime in the future!

So that’s the update on what’s been up. I hope everyone is well! Thanks for reading and entertaining my nutty obsession.